"We already know that an extraordinary extinction of species is taking place all over the world, breaking vital links in the chain of life. … We are witnessing firsthand a massive disruption of Earth's life systems, and all fingers point to one culprit: man. … we have to live in dynamic collaboration with the plant and animal kingdoms in a healty, life-sustaining environment. … Mankind's superior intellect and deep spiritual heritage will count for naught if we fail in this quest." –Lawrence Anthony

Archive for the 'Wikis' Category

The Wikimedia New England General Meetup happens Saturday, July 20, from noon to 2:30 pm at Wu Rosen Associates, 6 Edgerly Place, Boston, MA. RSVPs are appreciated. Contribute to the future of the chapter.

Just a brief note: Tonight’s (Monday, 9/10) Wikipedia gathering features a local public librarian and a local archivist and a discussion about Wikipedia Loves Libraries, the initiative for more collaboration between libraries, archives, and Wikimedia. Monday, September 10, 2012 7:00 PM Clover Food Lab 7 Holyoke St. Cambridge, MA 02138 The Boston Wikipedia Meetup Group […]

Can you believe Meetup is ten years old? It seems both like it’s been around longer and that it’s newer. Was it that long ago that I went to my first Meetup? And I still attend some gatherings and read group postings. Meetup is particularly awesome because of its ability to create and support communities […]

Garrett pointed me to this First Monday article about Wikipedia’s Featured Articles and revision patterns: “Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in Wikipedia” by Giacomo Poderi “… This article focuses on Wikipedia’s Featured Articles and shows that not every contribution can be considered as being of equal quality. Two groups of articles are […]

Cameron Chapman of the Mashable blog has complied a list of 100+ More Wiki Tools and Resources: Luminotes – A personal wiki-based notebook with a WYSIWYG editor. A downloadable version is also available Metadot – A free and very easy to use wiki host. Nexdo – A wiki for knowledge and project management that includes […]

Sarah Houghton-Jan of the San Jose Public Library and Shannon Staley of the San Jose State University Library gave a talk called (Microsoft) SharePoint for Libraries: Streamlining Your Intranet Management. Both of them created a joint intranet using Microsoft SharePoint, a free content management program. It offers shared workspaces and documents, wikis, blogs, calendaring, RSS […]

Garrett sent me a link to an ITConversations interview with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia about the future of search. That should be a good listen. Thanks, Garrett! & Happy Labor Day! (Guess I should stop laboring, eh?)

All Things Considered on National Public Radio interviewed Wikipedia editor Justen Deal (Justen seems to be Wikipedia user j. Nice initial!) for a piece about Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s entry and recent edits to it. Did someone unintentionally leak the news of US presidential Republican candidate John McCain selecting her as his running mate via […]

BusinessWeek has updated their 2005 article called “Blogs Will Change Your Business” with “Beyond Blogs: what business needs to know”: “But blogs, it turns out, are just one of the do-it-yourself tools to emerge on the Internet. Vast social networks such as Facebook and MySpace offer people new ways to meet and exchange information. Sites […]

According to a bit in The Wired Campus Garrett sent me, Encyclopedia Britannica is offering people who publish on the Web regularly (Webmasters, bloggers, etc.,) access to its content for free. Usually, it charges fees. This move is likely in response to the growing popularity of Wikipedia. I wonder if Britannica includes Wikimedia contributors among […]

“[T]he Oxford English Dictionary, arguably the greatest reference work in the English language…found its origins in a wiki model, whereby scholars put out the word to English speakers far and wide that they would welcome hard evidence of the earliest appearances of English words.” Garrett pointed me to a piece in The Chronicle of Higher […]

Liane Hansen of National Public Radio is filing audio postcards from a trip to Egypt. On Sunday, she gave us a picture of the library at Alexandria. Is it just a coincidence that she’s telling us about Egypt now when Wikimania will be there in July?

Garrett pointed me to a Citizendium press release about college credit for writing their articles as an incentive to contribute to a rival project to Wikipedia. "Students can take responsibility for their work for course credits, and teachers grade the finished work based on the quality of the final article produced from each student’s input. […]

As always, Garrett has an amazing wealth of stuff in his weekly Library News & Notes. I couldn’t find a permalink for this week’s edition, though. Here are some of the highlights. I myself don’t know where to begin reading. Credible Web? It’s where we click most: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0319/p17s01-stct.html Dusting Off the Archive for the Web: […]

Garrett let me know about a manual for editing Wikipedia from O’Reilly. Since the title indicates it’s the missing manual, does that mean when you purchase it, it magically disappears? RTFM. (WOTTA?) (Mom, the “f” is for “fine.”)

“Agence France Presse banned its reporters from using Facebook and Wikipedia as sources last week, as news organizations still struggle to safely use online (re)sources,” according to journalism.co.uk “Some newspapers picked up pictures on Facebook about Mr Bhutto, which turned out to be fake.” Clarifying this point, Lesourd said that journalists couldn’t use these sites […]

Here is the outline of the presentation I gave at the ASIST Annual Meeting on Wednesday, October 24, 2007. Tasked with discussing corporate blogs and wikis, I talked about some recent developments in those areas and used Renesys’ use of two blogs and an internal wiki to illustrate what people can do with wikis. Compared […]

Blogs and Wikis in the Corporate World American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting Jessica Baumgart Jack Vinson Jordan Frank Christina Pikas Kris Liberman Wednesday, October 24, 2007 I used Renesys’ weblogs and wiki to provide concrete examples of why and how corporations use the tools. Jack Vinson of Knowledge Jolt with Jack […]

Garrett pointed me to this New Scientist article about changes to Wikipedia to try to increase the quality of the content by making only edits by trusted people live immediately. While an effort to decrease vandalism and improve the overall quality of the content, some people fear many contributors—especially the ones who tend to stumble […]

The early bird registration rates for the 2007 ASIS&T Annual Meeting ends on Friday September 21, 2007. It was extended of the short time between Labor Day and the early cut off date. I can’t go because I have to attend the Digital Commonwealth program. j, Christina Pikas, Jack Vinson and Jordan Frank are on […]

Garrett sent me a link to this incredibly informative article from The Onion about some challenges to detecting vandalism in Wikipedia’s Dada article. (For those of you unfamiliar with The Onion, I should note that it’s a humorous newspaper.)

Since Garrett sent me the Chronicle of Higher Education piece on Wikipedia Scanner and one of my coworkers shared the BBC article about the same, I can’t resist mentioning the tool that scrapes data from the history sections of the articles and translates them into information most people can understand about from where the editors […]

Garrett e-mailed me a story from AlterNet about the man with the most Wikipedia articles: Richard Farmbrough, Wikipedian for 39 months and an admin for 30. "I am not actually obsessed with Wikipedia, despite appearances! If I am obsessed with anything, it is continuous improvement. I see Wikipedia as an example of this …" Farmbrough […]

I don’t think I’ve ever written about Grazr in this space before, regardless of how long I’ve known about it or the fact that a friend of mine is a champion of the tool. He gave me a detailed demo, which makes me want to pull writing about it off the backburner and into reality. […]

Garrett sent me a link to an AlterNet piece where Annalee Newitz tells her tale of what made her become a Wikipedia activist and why. Apparently, deletion can do more than just erase articles and history. Thanks, Garrett!

In January, the radio show Weekend America highlighted a deletion debate on Wikipedia about an anchorwoman in Wichita, Kansas, that explores the bigger question of whether local members of the media, even well-known ones, should be included in the work. During her interview, anchor Susan Peters talks about how she would like whatever decision to […]

At blog group tonight, we had a demonstration of Povo, a cool tool that mixes wikis with maps to have a site of knowledge about the Boston area. They plan to expand to other cities at some point in the future. There are search and tagging capabilities people in the group really like. Check it […]

The tragic shootings this past week at Virginia Tech pose huge challenges to campus communicators everywhere. It’s easy to look back at the events and critique how, where, and why communication efforts failed. It’s much more difficult to be in the situation itself and make decisions about what to do in a timely and effective […]

The New England Chapter of ASIS&T will be hosting it’s annual awards dinner on Thursday, May 10, 6-9PM MIT Faculty Club, 50 Memorial Drive (Building E52) Register now: http://www.neasist.org/pc/programs/20070510.html Join us for cocktails, dinner, presentation of awards for Simmons Student Member of the Year and NEASIST Chapter Member of the Year, and an engaging presentation […]

I’ll be talking with some educators from the country of Georgia about Web 2.0 kinds of things (blogs, wikis, sites where people can share other content, social networking sites, bookmarking sites, etc.). I know about a lot of the popular and good sites in America and among English speakers. I would be grateful for any […]

The International Herald Tribune reports that a former Wikipedia editor used fake credentials. “Under the name Essjay, the contributor edited thousands of Wikipedia entries and once was one of the few people with the authority to deal with vandalism and to arbitrate disputes between authors. To the Wikipedia world, Essjay was a tenured professor of […]

Noam Cohen uses the Middlebury College history department ban on Wikipedia in a New York Times article to frame a discussion about academic coursework contributing either directly or indirectly to Wikipedia’s contents. Cohen includes a quote by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that relates to other discussions people have had about college students citing encyclopedias: “Basically, […]

Here’s another suggested post from Rich. (Thanks, Rich!) I should probably have run this by some of my friends who work on Wikipedia for their thoughts before posting it, but, well, my time is horribly limited these days and I wanted to get this post published. I don’t anticipate being online much this weekend. Brock […]

Rich suggested I post this entry from Lorcan Dempsey discussing Wikipedia as a citable source and a valuable knowledgebase. Dempsey highlights its value and utility as a knowledgebase by mentioning how others use it to provide basic background on subjects. Dempsey then explains further why Middlebury College recently decided against allowing students to cite it. […]

One of the side effects of the import is that the other writers on the scratchpad have lost their access because account information didn’t transfer to WordPress Multiuser properly. I’m working on a resolution with our fabulous server administrator, but it might take a while. Meanwhile, Kim fed me an awesome definition of Web 2.0 […]

Garrett pointed me to this techdirt item mentioning legal cases citing Wikipedia. One court threw out a lower court’s case because it used the encyclopedia anyone can edit at almost any time. Thanks, Garrett! Addendum 2/6: The Berkman Center has a blurb about this, too, including a New York Times article that is no longer […]

If it weren’t for Garrett and Rich, I wouldn’t have much to blog these days … They’ve been doing us all a favor by graciously sending the scratchpad lots of links. Garrett sent me a blurb from slashdot about professors at Middlebury College banning Wikipedia as a cited source in students’ work.

It seems that Microsoft is now trying to figure out how to take on Wikipedia. The Associated Press article a friend sent me reports they tried to pay at least one person to fix some articles in Wikipedia it believes are slanted, er, not of a neutral point of view (NPOV), for those of you […]

Wikipedia turned 6 years old last Monday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia However, there was an article in Dec 5 issue of Information Week that “Wikipedia will fail in four years, crushed under the weight of an automated assault by marketers and others seeking online traffic” according to a law professor. http://tinyurl.com/2gn6cl Nicholas Carr of Rough Type has a […]

Tuesday’s NPR’s Talk of the Nation had Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything to talk about wikis, MySpace and about NPR’s new program, Rough Cuts, which allows audience collaboration. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story… Rough Cuts with Michel Martin http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story… link via Travelin’ Librarian: http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/index…. Michael Sauers wrote a book called Blogging and RSS: a […]

Kim pointed me to WikiChix, a site for female wiki editors that grew out of concern about gender balance in Wikipedia. An AlterNet article explores the question that popped into my mind when I learned WikiChix came out of a desire to explore gender issues in Wikipedia: "Is it better for women to segregate themselves […]

Last night, a friend mentioned to me over instant messenger he thought he learned former United States president Gerald Ford had died, but he hadn’t been able to confirm that. Knowing that Wikipedia is often updated quickly with information about people’s deaths, I went to their entry for him first. Not only did the article […]

I know some of you are big fans of Wikipedia and might be considering donating money this time of year. There’s a notice on the encyclopedia that a donor is willing to match today’s donations. I looked for more information about this on the site, but I didn’t find for what I was searching, like […]

Berkman has a bit on their site about access to Wikipedia from China because of Hiawatha Bray’s Boston Globe article about the topic. An article rich with Berkman connections (Fellows Jimbo Wales and Rebecca MacKinnon and executive director John Palfrey), it discusses some of the issues about China’s efforts to blog certain Internet access. At […]

Scholarpedia Scholarpedia is the free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world. Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link. However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some very […]

The ResourceShelf has a bit on Congresspedia, a wiki with lots of information about Congress on it. I first learned about Congresspedia at Wikimania in August when I met someone from this project of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Jimmy Wales, famous for his work with Wikipedia, is rumored to be the Not my Job guest on today’s National Public Radio game show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! I noticed his photo on the show’s Web site. The show one of Boston’s NPR stations is airing has Dave Barry as the guest, instead. […]

The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting a live discussion on Wikipedia on Thursday October 26 at 3 p.m. Eastern Time: Wikipedia: Beat it, Join it or Ignore It? http://chronicle.com/live/2006/10/halava… There is a free article written by Brock Reed about Wikipedia in the Chronicle issue dated October 27, 2006: Free access: Can Wikipedia ever make […]

"My article is still there, at the moment. But I wish it weren’t," writes Seth Finkelstein, a noted programmer working against censorware, at the end of an editorial about what it’s like to be a living person with a biography in Wikipedia that gets vandalized and republished outside of his control. Of course, now that […]

Wikibooks, in the same vein as Wikipedia, offers a collection of free, open-content textbooks that you can edit. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page link via LibrarianinBlack http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/

Larry Sanger, who played a role in the early days of Wikipedia, has a new project called Citizendium, "’citizens’ compendium of everything,’ will be an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance." More info about it is floating around.

Reality follows art, what more can I say? Apparently in all innocence, several wikipedia editors have finally come up with the following policy: Seriosuly, don’t panic. Many Douglas Adams fans will be surprised and delighted to find that finally Wikipedia has come around to their point of view. Posted by Kim Bruning

Maybe I should have warned you about this meeting, but I failed to. At blog group tonight, we’re doing a joint meeting with some folks in town for Wikimania. They by far outnumber the blog group participants, so we’re having some great discussions about Wikipedia. I asked about citations in articles, which is something many […]

No, I was not intentionally planning to write about Wikipedia leading up to Wikimania. I just keep seeing things about it, things I would normally point to anyway. The Center for History and New Media reprints an article by center director Roy Rozenzweig about Wikipedia’s open source model, both in terms of the software and […]

Rich, who is absolutely no cakesniffer, nudged me about the current edition of The New Yorker’s article about Wikipedia, which begins by comparing it to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia is larger and includes lots of content Britannica does not. Does that make it better? Or just different? Stacy Schiff also takes a historical look at […]

Bob Doyle has a bit in E-Content magazine about whether a blog or a wiki is the right tool and how to decide. "So let’s take a brief look at the original design concepts and information organizing principles behind wikis and blogs. We’ll see they are converging in functionality and usability under market pressures to […]

Wikimania registration costs increase on Monday, July 10. Volunteers might get a discount. Disclaimer: I am now in charge of wrangling volunteers for Wikimania, among plenty of other tasks. Addendum: One of my readers pointed out that the discount registration deadline moved to July 15. "Beginning July 16th, admission costs $100 per day (still $240 […]

I learned yesterday there’s a travel scholarship for Wikimania and its deadline is today (Wednesday, June 28). Please apply. I’m really sorry for the late posting. I know some of you who wanted to apply will probably see this way too late. Please spread the word if you can. Also, the organizers plan to raise […]

The Independent published an article about wikis and how they’re changing the way people do research. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, especially since it is available only to subscribers and I am not one.

Garrett brought WetPaint, a new hosted WYSIWYG wiki platform, to my attention via an item on C|Net. It looks like people can edit, e-mail, and comment on wiki pages. There are keyword tag clouds. Moderators can lock pages they don’t want just anyone to edit. For example, the Lego front page is locked, but the […]

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran an article discussing who gets to edit Wikipedia in light of recent article editing restrictions and the change to prevent everyone from editing all articles all of the time.

It won’t surprise many of you to learn I’ll be presenting at the SLA 2006 Annual Conference since I’ve done that several times in the past. This year, I’m on a panel about wikis called Newsroom Wikis: Wiki Applications in the Newsroom on Monday morning, June 12. I’m giving the “what is a wiki and […]

Garrett had two bits recently about wikis and scientists. In one, he mentions OpenWetWare, “… an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering” with participating groups from a variety of college and university labs. Another refers to a Nature article. […]

Those of you who have attended one of my presentations about weblogs and libraries might remember me showing a long list of libraries with weblogs. That list is now available as a wiki. Amanda writes about her decision to change formats. I asked Amanda if there’s a place in her list for librarians like me […]

Remember that study published in the journal Nature about how Wikipedia is only slightly less accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica when it comes to certain articles about science? Apparently, it made the folks at Britannica nervous enough to look into the study itself. They sent around an e-mail to a select group today encouraging people […]

At the Berkman Center for Internet & Society right now, David Weinberger is talking about authority and Wikipedia. http://harmony.law.harvard.edu/webcast.s… is the webcast link. The talk should last until approximately 7:30 pm. We spent a few minutes talking about the value of names and why many people uses pseudonyms in the Wikipedia community. I’ve been thinking about […]

If you’re more into wikis than Gary Price, go to Grafton Street tonight (3/8) at 6 pm for some wikilicious discussion and drinks instead of going to a wonderful discussion about Web tools and search engines and stuff at Simmons College. Either will probably be equally satiating. sj, of course, will be at Grafton. He […]

Brett pointed me to Comedy of errors hits the world of Wikipedia in The Sunday Times, which focuses on vandalism related to entries of prominent Brits. The Independent has its own version of the article. As I was cleaning off my desk, I found a Joseph Janes column* in the October American Libraries about authority […]

Part two of The Boston Globe’s brief series on Wikipedia ran today–just in time for our event at Simmons College tonight at 7 pm. One article includes brief profiles of several local volunteers. David Mehegan didn’t mention that Aaron Swartz is actually famous enough to have his own entry in Wikipedia legitimately. sj, of course, […]

"Can [Wikipedia] stop sabotage and distortion without losing the freedom and openness that made the reference possible?" asks David Mehegan in part one of a 2 part series about Wikipedia in The Boston Globe. "I think that global universal access to basic information can have a transformative impact on the world," explains Wikipedia founder Jimmy […]

The Dowbrigade, who teaches English to international students, is using a wiki to keep up with his class while he’s recovering from an injury. Have a speedy recovery, Michael! If only rearranging innards were as easy as editing a wiki!

In the Online Journalism Review, Ray Grieselhuber proposes six ways to improve Wikipedia. "Wikipedia is a good idea. There is a need for a freely available, reliable encyclopedia on the Internet. Commercial alternatives like Britannica clearly have their place. But, if only because users expect information on the Internet to be free, we should be […]

B4, a Wikipedian who’s working on a graphic for Wikimania, is looking for a decent, public domain or loosely licensed image of the spines of generic old books for the graphic. If you have one you would like to share, drop him a note on his talk page. And, no, he’s not B-4 from Star […]

A coworker pointed me to the Village Voice’s examination of Wikipedia. It includes a nice history of the project, too. Wikipedia’s general counsel, Brad Patrick, will visit Berkman on Tuesday (1/31) for their luncheon series. To attend, please RSVP to rsvp at cyber.law.harvard.edu no later than noon on Friday (1/27). It’ll be Webcast http://harmony.law.harvard.edu/luncheon….), too, […]

For a long time, I felt like not joining Wikipedia was the right thing to do because it meant I could possibly remain more objective in my reporting of Wikimedia Foundation activities and appear more objective. However, now, I’m beginning to feel conflicted. In my attempts to continue to learn about the Wikimedia Foundation projects, […]

Two professors and a technologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which is a business school, analyze Wikipedia’s quality and some of the challenges for the encyclopedia. They suggest a rating system might be a way to let people know about the quality of articles. "Indeed, the key may be putting Wikipedia into a […]

The article Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage of Wikipedia and Its Authors provides an interesting look at Wikipedia because of how it maps the work. The first ten pages also offer a great introduction to the encyclopedia and provide lots of great statistics that were current as of October 2005.

"I think an enormous number of problems in the world are just caused by a lack of information, a lack of understanding, a lack of reflection," explains Jimmy Wales about the importance of access to free, neutral information, especially in certain regions of the world in this Christian Science Monitor article. As well as summarizing […]

George Johnson expounds on the differences between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia the recent Nature study highlights. After explaining the complex differences in the number of siblings Dmitri Mendeleyev had, he observes that the number typically isn’t an important detail. For many people, though, one error–no matter how minor–jeopardizes the reliability of the entire source. One […]

Jeffrey Harrow of The Future Brief examines encyclopedias and the Internet, of course including Wikipedia. Some quotes: "… [T]he Web provides an incredible, vast information resource on virtually every subject imaginable (and on many subjects beyond many of our imaginations) literally at our fingertips. That’s the upside. But that’s also the downside, since it’s often […]

Larry Sanger, who worked on Nupedia with Jimmy Wales and was present at the creation of Wikipedia*, is starting a new project to compete with the wiki-based encyclopedia. Sanger is addressing some of the concerns about quality and accountability by hiring experts to be responsible for certain areas of Digital Universe. *Larry’s identification as a […]

Matthew Battles, an editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin and author, writes in the Sunday Globe’s Ideas section about Wikipedia. He presents some ideas about how people who understand the workings of networked information can have more power than subject experts: "The Seigenthaler affair points up a crucial condition of the Internet’s information ecology: It’s […]

A Newslib post yielded some links to more news about Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales has an interview with BusinessWeek. The Guardian wonders about the wisdom of crowds. Gary Price discusses the encyclopedia. sj posts about Wikipedia Review, a forum for Wikipedia complaints that does not seem to be affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Addenda: The Chronicle […]

The journal Nature publishes a news item comparing Encyclopedia Britannica with Wikipedia and finds them close in accuracy. Of the examined science articles, Britannica’s content averaged about 3 errors per article. Wikipedia’s averaged about 4. The study doesn’t sound very scientific: it’s a very small sample of content on both of the encyclopedia’s Web sites. […]

After all the talk about what happened to John Seigenthaler’s Wikipedia entry, the mischief-maker speaks out. Brian Chase said he created Seigenthaler’s entry as a joke for a co-worker. He claims he had no idea people used Wikipedia seriously and that his joke would cause so much trouble. After learning Seigenthaler was looking for the […]

Wikipedia continues to be in the blogs and the news. Amy Disch shared a link to a memo on a Poynter discussion board from a New York Times editor suggesting that reporters not use Wikipedia as a source anymore. C-Net News explores Wikipedia’s legal liability in light of the Seigenthaler situation. Based on certain legislation […]